World War Two
War and Peace, Welsh National Opera review - an Operation Barbarossa that comes offMonday, 17 September 2018
What lunatic would ever have the idea of turning War and Peace into an opera? Well, maybe if you, a composer, had found yourself in Moscow in June 1941 when news of the German invasion reached the Soviet capital, you might have decided to mount an... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: It Happened HereTuesday, 21 August 2018
Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s It Happened Here surely deserves the acclaim often accorded it as “the most ambitious amateur film ever made”, and the rich supporting extras on this BFI dual-format release make clear why. Best of all is a 65-... Read more... |
The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, ITV review - the ludicrous in search of the preposterousThursday, 26 July 2018
Belatedly picking up from where series 2 of The Bletchley Circle left off in 2014, this comeback version has a go at transporting a couple of the original characters to the Californian West Coast, where they embroil themselves in the hunt for that... Read more... |
Line of Separation, All 4, review - handsome if soapy epicSaturday, 02 June 2018
You don’t see a lot of German drama imported to British television. France, Italy, Scandinavia, yes. But the biggest country in Europe is less of a player. The great exception – and it really was great - was Deutschland 83, a thrilling hit when... Read more... |
Effigies of Wickedness, Gate Theatre review - this sleek cabaret conceals desolation behind a smileThursday, 17 May 2018
The show’s subtitle – “Songs banned by the Nazis” – is a catchy one, and somewhere under the confetti, the stilettos, the extravagant nudity, the sequins and even shinier repartee that are wrapped around Effigies of Wickedness like a mink coat on... Read more... |
Life and Fate / Uncle Vanya, Maly Drama Theatre, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - the greatest ensemble?Wednesday, 16 May 2018
Towards the end of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg's Life and Fate, a long scene in director Lev Dodin's daring if necessarily selective adaptation of Vasily Grossman's epic novel brings many of the actors together after a sequence of... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: They Came to a CityFriday, 27 April 2018
Ealing Studios veteran Basil Dearden may have directed it, but 1944’s They Came to a City is mostly a JB Priestley film, an engaging blend of the mundane and the metaphysical. The work’s stage origins are clear; apart from the newly-written prologue... Read more... |
Absolute Hell, National Theatre review - high gloss show saves over-rated classicThursday, 26 April 2018
Rodney Ackland must be the most well-known forgotten man in postwar British theatre. His legend goes like this: Absolute Hell was originally titled The Pink Room, and first staged in 1952 at the Lyric Hammersmith, where it got a critical mauling.... Read more... |
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society review - artery-furring whimsyFriday, 20 April 2018
There’s a serious film to be made about the German occupation of the Channel Islands. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is not that film. The absolute gobful of a title more than hints at artery-furring whimsy. Its provenance is... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bremen: 150 years of A German RequiemWednesday, 18 April 2018
STOP PRESS (10/4/2020): this performance is up for a short period on the Deutsche Kammerphilhamonie's website for free viewing. Paavo Järvi is offering a live Q&A on conducting Brahms on Saturday 11 April 2020.They did things differently in 1858... Read more... |
Pressure, Park Theatre review - David Haig terrific in his own dramaWednesday, 04 April 2018
There are few things more British than talking about the weather. What makes this play about a meteorologist interesting, however, is its historical setting: the eve of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. Although stories from the... Read more... |
Agnès Poirier: Left Bank review - Paris in war and peaceSunday, 11 March 2018
There are too many awestruck cultural histories of Paris to even begin to count. The Anglophone world has always been justly dazzled by its own cohorts of Paris-based writers and artists, as well as by the seemingly effortless superiority of... Read more... |
